


A Good Start

by Rosy_el



Series: The Sunshine Boy and the Snowflake Girl [18]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-29 01:53:57
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8471029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosy_el/pseuds/Rosy_el
Summary: El had friends, she explained. Lucas and Dustin and Will and Mike. “That’s a good start,” Nancy and Mrs. Wilk would say, and with good intent. “But maybe you could make some friends that are girls, too. Just try to introduce yourself to a few nice-looking girls in your classes!” And then the phrase she loathed the most: “It’ll be good for you.”But the girls at school didn't like her.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I think this piece is important in the development of El outside of her time with the boys. It features fluff but mostly explores El trying to fit into this new, normal life.

September, 1985

The girls at school didn’t like her.

She didn’t look like them. They all had meticulously smeared eyeshadow and eyeliner, bangs shaped to 1985 perfection. El wore pink chapstick and didn’t own a blow-dryer.

She didn’t talk like them. She didn’t talk at all. They all giggled about Craig Cunningham and passed notes to one another and flirted with the boys in her classes. El always sat by the window and stared at people for too long.

She certainly didn’t think like them, even aside from the whole _psychokinetic_ thing. They liked Madonna and Saturday Night Live and Tom Cruise. El thought Madonna was weird and only watched movie tapes (mostly in the Wheeler basement) and hated _Top Gun_ when Nancy took her to see it the next year.

On top of secular education, Nancy took it upon herself to educate Eleven on pop culture. But, to the older girl’s frustration, El was painfully uninterested in most of what Nancy had to teach. On the other hand, parts of El warmly reminded Nancy of Barb: her distaste toward superficiality, her blunt but pleasant honesty, her quiet yet steadfast loyalty to her friends. Nancy told herself she kept El at the house too long some afternoons for the sake of adequately catching her up in schoolwork. But that wasn’t the case at all.

Roughly a month into ninth grade at Hawkins High School—her first year ever enrolled in school—El was feeling pressure from Nancy and her speech therapist, Mrs. Wilk, to try to make some friends. El had friends, she explained. Lucas and Dustin and Will and Mike. Well, she wasn’t altogether sure what Mike was but still mumbled his name softly at the end of the list.

“That’s a good start,” Nancy and Mrs. Wilk would say, and with good intent. “But maybe you could make some friends that are girls, too. Just try to introduce yourself to a few nice-looking girls in your classes!” And then the phrase she loathed the most: “It’ll be good for you.”

But the girls at school didn’t like her and it didn’t take El long to catch on.

She chewed the skin on her lip as her eyes flitted around the room. _Someone nice-looking. Someone nice-looking_. It was 3:13 and Mr. Koide was rushing through the end of the algebra lesson, like usual. Kids were packing their bags instead of paying him any heed, twitching to be released from school. El was twitching for other reasons, picking mercilessly at the plastic corner of her blue Algebra binder and kicking the leg of her desk.

 _Someone nice-looking_. Her eyes settled on Michelle Brown, a blonde girl with a ponytail tied up with an eggplant-purple scrunchie. She wore a lavender blouse and her lips were covered in pink gloss. Michelle sat a couple rows to El’s right. She looked nice enough. Anxiety squished Eleven’s stomach and she glanced back up at the clock, watching the second-hand (“It’s the looooong one,” Nancy would say) tick menacingly closer to the big 12 at the top of the clock.

“Get your assignment from my desk and don’t forget about the test coming up on—” The sudden resounding chimes of the release bell drowned out Mr. Koide’s frantic spill of words. He told so many unfunny jokes during class that he always ran out of time by the end. El trembled as she pushed all her things into her backpack, leaving it open and slung over one shoulder as she approached the front of the classroom to retrieve her homework assignment. Bright colors blurred around her; all the other kids rushing to snatch the same homework and then flee the high school before they got run over by juniors—or worse, _seniors_. El kept Michelle in the corner of her eye and stuck close to her back while everyone filtered chaotically out of the room.

El wanted nothing more than to just leave but Mrs. Wilk’s face in her head compelled her finger into Michelle Brown’s shoulder. She poked the girl twice and then held her breath.

Michelle Brown turned around, blonde ponytail whipping El across the face. She blinked and swallowed, hands suddenly warm and sweaty.

“Hi, my name is…” she stammered for a moment, recalling her and Hopper’s conversation so many months ago.

 _“You don’t tell people your name is Eleven, okay? Just tell them your first name is Jane but you go by your middle name, alright? Sound good to you?”_ Despite her confusion at the jumble of foreign words and about what was so wrong with “Eleven” it sounded good enough to her to go along with her father’s proposal.

“El,” she completed, focusing hard on maintaining eye contact with Michelle, like Mrs. Wilk had told her.

 “Uh,” Michelle had a pinched look on her face. “Hi?” Her eyebrows were drawn down and a smile twisted at her sticky mouth as she glanced over at her snickering friends, revealing two rows of shiny pink and yellow braces. She lifted her eyebrows at them and shrugged, covering her mouth to hide her laughter as she flipped back around and lead them away in a strut down the hall. Laura Conley, a girl in the group, stole a look at El, a hesitant frown on her lips as they made their way further down the wide hall.

El stared after them, wet palms clutched tightly around her backpack straps. A sinking feeling filled her chest as she watched them stride away, laughter still echoing through the hallway. She could feel her face grow hot and her throat pinch and her eyes get prickly.

It wasn’t difficult for El to realize that she had not just made a friend.

El gulped and turned the other direction quickly, running into the other students leaving class and pushing through them with urgency. It felt like everyone in the hall was watching her—like somehow she was back in the tub at the lab and everyone was just looking at her and wouldn’t stop. She walked straight past her locker and found her bicycle without waiting for any of the boys.

“Hey, El!” She could hear Mike call out to her as she started to pump her legs down hard on the pedals. “El!” Guilt stabbed at her lungs for ignoring him but she didn’t want to tell Mike what had happened. She didn’t want them all to see her cry. So she pretended she couldn’t hear him.

But it didn’t take them for them to catch up with her.

“El!” It was Lucas. El blinked tears away and feigned normalcy. “Slow down!”

She pretended surprised to see them and slowed her pedaling down accordingly. “Oh, sorry,” came her meek response.

“How come you left school so fast?” Mike asked, pretending himself as though he hadn’t been waiting hours through his classes to see her at the end of school.

El shrugged and kept her blotchy face hidden from them, still slightly ahead on her bike. “I just have a lot of homework. I forgot to wait up I guess.”

Lucas scrunched his eyebrows up, an unsure look on his face. Mike tried to look unaffected, like the idea of her not being to hang out didn’t disappoint him at all—like he hadn’t been waiting to all day.

“Do you want any help on your homework?” Mike offered as casually as he could. Dustin brought up the rear on his own bike as he choked down laughter and shot Lucas a look. Meanwhile, Will smiled knowingly. Mike was oblivious, only paying attention to El’s back.

El shook her head.

Lucas sped up and looked over at her, a sudden frown replacing the smirk he had previously had on his mouth. “Wait. El, are you crying?”

Mike straightened up on his bike right away and Dustin fell quiet.

El wiped furiously at her eyes. “No,” she murmured unconvincingly. “Just leave me alone.”

Dustin offered Will a nervous look and Mike felt his stomach drop.

“What’s wrong, El?” Lucas stayed stubbornly locked in place beside her, rendering her attempts to speed away useless. She grimaced and felt a tear skate down her cheek and drip off her chin.

“I said leave me alone,” El whispered angrily, knuckles turning white. She had to focus on not letting her emotions get the better of her abilities, channeling her force into gripping—no— _strangling_ her bike handles.

“We aren’t going to leave you alone, El!” Lucas cried defiantly. “We’re your friends! You can talk to us!”

El slammed her brakes sharply, her tires screeching in protest and heavy breaths pulling at her lungs. The four boys followed suit in varying levels of grace; Dustin ran into Mike and Will nearly tipped onto his side.

They all watched El in anticipation, nerves rattling at their bones. They were still learning how to navigate having a girl in their group of best friends. Most of the time El was just like them; she loved _Star Wars_ and found D &D fascinating and could burp like the best of them. But they were fifteen now and sometimes El reminded them why they found girls so confusing in the first place.

“You’re my friends.” Something about the way El said it made her sound unsure whether or not it was true.

“Uh, yeah?” Lucas replied, exchanging a confused expression with the other boys.

“Why?” She asked, less confident.

It caught all four off guard. _Why?_ They all shot looks at one another, trying frantically to grasp at what El was saying.

“Why are we your friends?” Will spoke up, his voice as comforting as ever. Will had an air about him—something calm and kind and peaceful—that none of the others had. El liked Will a lot after she met him for the first time but even his voice didn’t draw her face toward them; she stayed facing away coldly.

El scratched at her cheek, itchy from the salt crusting on it.

“You _have_ to be my friends, don’t you?” She started out quiet, like the words she was saying were new to her, like she was realizing something—piecing it together out loud. “Because I’m a freak. You… you…” she searched for the word, desperate. “You _pity_ me.”

“What? El, that’s crazy!” Mike was growing hot in the face and wanted to put an end to this immediately.

“No one at school likes me.”

He fell silent.

“I tried to make a friend today and…” her voice cut out. “None of them like me.” She shot a pointed look at Lucas. “They think I’m _weird_.”

Her words stung at him as he flashed back to the first days he knew the girl. He had called her a weirdo and a freak and a traitor. But Lucas had apologized for all that. He and El were friends now. Lucas cared about her deeply, whether he’d admit it out loud or not. His hands fisted hotly.

A strangely confident voice, belonging to Dustin, broke the heavy silence. “You are weird.” El turned and looked at him, face pink and bewildered.  “You’re weird, El. That’s why we like you.” He smiled at her, his new front teeth showing brightly and happily.

“Yeah,” Will caught on. “You’re super weird!” His eyes were excited and warm. “We’re all weird, El. That’s why we’re friends.”

She stared at him, head cocked slightly. “Why does no one else like me?”

Mike coughed and then summoned enough courage to speak. Talking to El was one nerve-wracking thing all on its own. Talking to El in front of the guys? It reduced him to a heap of blush and sweat.

“The kids at school care about stupid stuff. They like to pick on people for being weird because they think it makes them look cooler or something. But El, none of them know you like I—we—” he corrected in a millisecond, “like we know you. Being weird is awesome!”

Lucas clapped El on the shoulder. “El, we like being your friend. We chose to be your friend. Just because those losers at school can’t see how great you are doesn’t mean shit.”

El frowned.

“Sorry,” Lucas added.

She studied him and then wiped her jacket sleeve across her nose shyly, clearing away dried tears and crusted snot. El looked at the pavement and then at each of the boys, her eyes skittering away from Mike a little too fast. She kicked on her bike stand and climbed off the pink thing. El crossed to the other side and hugged Lucas. His arms hung limp at his sides, a little shocked, and his face incredulous. But then he shrugged and hugged the girl back, patting her backpack kindly.

She pulled away and looked at the boys again.

“I’m glad we’re friends,” she smiled, eyes filling with different tears. She laughed and picked absentmindedly at her jacket sleeve. “But I really do have homework.”

She threw herself back onto her bike rather unceremoniously and they rode off down the road, the group dismembering one by one as they all reached their respective streets. Mike tried to hide his sour disappointment regarding El’s preoccupation until suddenly it was just them and she spoke up.

“I have some algebra homework and I don’t think my dad will be able to help…” she complained strategically.

“Oh,” Mike turned pink and scratched at his neck. “I could help you, if you want me to.”

She tucked her hair behind her ears and smiled at her bike basket.

“Okay.”

\----

Two days later, when El had algebra again and wanted nothing more than to spend the class period hiding in the bathroom but slipped into class nonetheless, she noticed someone sitting behind her spot by the window—a spot that, until that day, had always been empty.

It was Laura Conley.

The dark-haired girl saw El walk in and nervously fidgeted, straightening her textbook and algebra folder anxiously. El grimaced and felt blood rush to her face but took her seat anyway, avoiding Michelle Brown’s general area with all her might. _Why isn’t Laura sitting by Michelle?_

El unpacked her things and looked out the window.

“Um, it’s Jane, right?” Laura whispered timidly. El blinked and turned around. Laura had long dark brown crimped hair and bangs that made her crisp blue eyes stand out like ice.

“I go by El,” she recited the script.

“Oh, El.” Laura corrected, a shaky smile on her face. She had big, slightly crooked front teeth that made her mouth look sort of huge. But her toothy smile was still pretty, El thought. Laura shot a careful glance in Michelle Brown’s direction, her smile faltering a little. “I just wanted to, um, apologize for the other day. Michelle can be kind of…” she rubbed her lips together, “I should’ve said something that day. What she did wasn’t very nice and… I’m sorry.”

El stared at her for too long but Laura didn’t seem to mind. Too much.

“That’s okay,” El finally offered, a timid smile finding its way to her mouth. “Does this mean we’re friends now?” She asked softly, eyes drawn down to the tile floor.

Laura laughed shortly, surprised at El’s question. It sounded like something a little girl would ask another while playing at the park. But a weight lifted from her shoulders. She had felt so guilty when she saw the look on El’s face just the couple of days before. Sure, this Jane Hopper girl didn’t say much and ate lunch with a bunch of odd-looking boys but that didn’t mean she deserved to be laughed at. “Yeah,” Laura smiled, confused but amused. “We’re friends now.”

El ran to Mrs. Wilk’s office right after the bell rang. Then she grabbed her bike and waited for the boys more impatiently than she ever had before and sped straight to the Wheeler’s to relay the day’s events to Nancy. She told Mike too, who was just relieved this new friend was female.

**Author's Note:**

> As always: thank you so much for reading this. It means EVERYTHING to see people affected by these little stories. Keep leaving comments about what you enjoy and things you'd like to see explored! I love each and every comment and they seriously make my day so much better. They inspire me to write more and more. 
> 
> P.S.: Wow, did you see Millie in Sigma's "Find Me" because tumblr lost its collective mind last night and for pretty good reason.
> 
> P.P.S./P.S.S. (Which is it?): I LOVE ideas based on songs. SEND ME SONGS and I promise I'll deliver.


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